One of the author's chief delights as editor of "Change" is to read, every year, the personal statements of students who have won the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award. Pat Cross, professor "emerita" at the University of California, Berkeley, has long been a leading scholar in higher education. These future leaders of higher education, working in a variety of disciplines, address a question posed in this issue's editorial: how are educators going to continue to attract the best and brightest into their profession, given all the pressures that it is under? It seems that somehow, they are still managing to do so. Drawn from the personal statements that accompanied their nomination materials, the students' own words will show readers why the author believes that. In this article, the author presents the voices of the 2009 award winners.